And Dr. Meigs asserts, on the same page, “Indeed, I believe that his practice in that department of the profession was greater than that of any other gentleman, which was probably the cause of his seeing a greater number of the cases.”  This from a professor of midwifery, who some time ago assured a gentleman whom he met in consultation, that the night on which they met was the eighteenth in succession that he himself had been summoned from his repose, seems hardly satisfactory.

I must call the attention of the inquirer most particularly to the Quarterly Report above referred to, and the letters of Dr. Meigs and Dr. Rutter, to be found in the “Medical Examiner.”  Whatever impression they may produce upon his mind, I trust they will at least convince him that there is some reason for looking into this apparently uninviting subject.

At a meeting of the College of Physicians just mentioned, Dr. Warrington stated, that a few days after assisting at an autopsy of puerperal peritonitis, in which he laded out the contents of the abdominal cavity with his hands, he was called upon to deliver three women in rapid succession.  All of these women were attacked with different forms of what is commonly called puerperal fever.  Soon after these he saw two other patients, both on the same day, with the same disease.  Of these five patients two died.

At the same meeting, Dr. West mentioned a fact related to him by Dr. Samuel Jackson of Northumberland.  Seven females, delivered by Dr. Jackson in rapid succession, while practising in Northumberland County, were all attacked with puerperal fever, and five of them died.  “Women,” he said, “who had expected me to attend upon them, now becoming alarmed, removed out of my reach, and others sent for a physician residing several miles distant.  These women, as well as those attended by midwives; all did well; nor did we hear of any deaths in child-bed within a radius of fifty miles, excepting two, and these I afterwards ascertained to have been caused by other diseases.”  He underwent, as he thought, a thorough purification, and still his next patient was attacked with the disease and died.  He was led to suspect that the contagion might have been carried in the gloves which he had worn in attendance upon the previous cases.  Two months or more after this he had two other cases.  He could find nothing to account for these, unless it were the instruments for giving enemata, which had been used in two of the former cases, and were employed by these patients.  When the first case occurred, he was attending and dressing a limb extensively mortified from erysipelas, and went immediately to the accouchement with his clothes and gloves most thoroughly imbued with its efluvia.  And here I may mention, that this very Dr. Samuel Jackson of Northumberland is one of Dr. Dewees’s authorities against contagion.

The three following statements are now for the first time given to the public.  All of the cases referred to occurred within this State, and two of the three series in Boston and its immediate vicinity.